It’s quite possible that liberals have come out of the closet and openly called for despotism in the past, but I don’t recall any being really blatant about it. Until today.
Liberal NYT columnist Thomas Friedman has come out of the despotic closet to call for a dictatorship here in the US, a la China. Seriously, he did. Read about it here. The man is so deeply disturbed by the fact that the left isn’t getting everything they want, he’s calling for a Chinese style autocracy!
Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.
One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century. It is not an accident that China is committed to overtaking us in electric cars, solar power, energy efficiency, batteries, nuclear power and wind power. China’s leaders understand that in a world of exploding populations and rising emerging-market middle classes, demand for clean power and energy efficiency is going to soar. Beijing wants to make sure that it owns that industry and is ordering the policies to do that, including boosting gasoline prices, from the top down.
Our one-party democracy is worse….
Did you get that? I wonder who will adopt America’s daughters if we turn into little China. Not that China doesn’t already own us, but I digress.
The best response to Friedman’s ridiculous ramblings was written by Jonah Goldberg, author of Liberal Fascism. Goldberg’s done the research and knows a liberal fascist when he spots one.
If only America could drop its inefficient and antiquated system, designed in the age before globalization and modernity and, most damning of all, before the lantern of Thomas Friedman’s intellect illuminated the land. If only enlightened experts could do the hard and necessary things that the new age requires, if only we could rely on these planners to set the ship of state right. Now, of course, there are “drawbacks” to such a system: crushing of dissidents with tanks, state control of reproduction, government control of the press and the internet. Omelets and broken eggs, as they say. More to the point, Friedman insists, these “drawbacks” pale in comparison to the system we have today here in America.
I cannot begin to tell you how this is exactly the argument that was made by American fans of Mussolini in the 1920s. It is exactly the argument that was made in defense of Stalin and Lenin before him (it’s the argument that idiotic, dictator-envying leftists make in defense of Castro and Chavez today). It was the argument made by George Bernard Shaw who yearned for a strong progressive autocracy under a Mussolini, a Hitler or a Stalin (he wasn’t picky in this regard). This is the argument for an “economic dictatorship” pushed by Stuart Chase and the New Dealers. It’s the dream of Herbert Croly and a great many of the Progressives.
Liberals are already defending Friedman, naturally. Via memeorandum I found this, this and this in a matter of five minutes.
Friedman’s fired the first shot, expect more liberal calls for autocracy now that their guy is in power. It’s the in thing today, Freidman just happens to be the first to clearly spell out what many on the left have been working to accomplish for decades.
I’ll be the first to buy Tom a one way ticket to Beijing or Pyongyang, and let him try it first hand for a few years. Then, he can report to us how “Dear Leader” is handling his every utopian want or need. I say let him talk, talk, talk. This is in the soul of EVERY secular progressive; he just had the guts to spit it out on paper. Delicious.
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I’ll chip in.
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[...] while they need to get more creative or something. This is the same guy who has written that he pines for despotism, as long as it’s led by some “reasonably enlightened [...]
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[...] is the same guy who thinks we need a little despotism to get things done. Down with democracy! It’s time for a dictator with an iron fist to whip [...]
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[...] Read the whole scary thing. He even called for China to boycott the US economy and for the World Trade Organization to impose carbon taxes on the citizens of our sovereign nation. (Obviously, he’s not an economist, or he’d realize that if the US economy fails we won’t be able to pay our huge debt to China. Duh!) This is how many progressives think, especially those of the ruling class. Wouldn’t it be convenient for them if we weren’t allowed to vote? He must follow Thomas Friedman. [...]
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